******Writer, Photographer, Painter, Sculptor, Musician******* “It’s the journey and not the destination” said Anthony Bourdain.

Must Have Family

I was watching “Must Have Dog” and thinking about how neat the protagonists’ large family was. Ah, blog idea, I thought and began this post, then let it sit and stew for a few days and sure enough, *XUP*, blogs about having a large family. Great minds or what?

There is a huge difference in people who grow up in a large family as opposed to those of us who are/or are like, only children. My sister grew up in our grandmother’s home. This was approximately an hour and a half drive, one way. Oh, and she is ten years older than I am. My brother, who was six years older than me and who was my protector/advisor and chess/cribbage partner, died in 1990. I miss him still.

While my brother and I were close, there was still that six-year’s difference in our age. My friends had crushes on him and he helped me out with ‘boyfriend’ issues. We did not hang out together though. Vacations hardly count. Even there, the contact consisted mostly of rolling our eyes at each other while our parents loudly debated whether it was day or night.

Despite these debates, which only occurred anytime our parents were both in the same county, our house was exceedingly quiet. At times, it was deathly quiet. Those were the times when dad was not home and the TV was off.

Unlike people who grow up in big families with: houses full of noise, loud discussions at the dinner table, and lots of games, I like my quiet. I am used to quiet and it is precious to me.

The three boys, who live with us now, spent many years in a large family. There were ten children in the family when the last two came to live with us. It almost seems as if being alone is a frightening thing to them, to be avoided at all costs.

I, on the other hand, can sit and stare at patterns in the carpet and be entertained. Of course, I see things in the patterns that other people do not see. I am happy to travel alone. I am fine with eating alone. Can go to a movie alone and enjoy it. Quiet is a good thing to me. I value quiet. Not so much, people from big families.

2 Responses

We had 5 kids in our family and it was always pretty loud. We did live in the country though, so there was ample opportunity to go off and be alone somewhere. I like being alone now. As I mentioned in my post, once in a while I like to be part of a big noisy group, but mostly I value my own company. So there goes your theory! I think of the 5 of us, 3 like lots of alone time while the other 2 can’t bear to ever be alone.

I guess my “sample” was just too small. My mother (family of 6 kids) cannot stand to be alone for a minute. husband likes to talk, play games and have family around him. Youngest boy, family of 10 but he was the isolated one and now he does not like to be alone at all. Me, grew up basically alone (without friends even as we were rural and I had like two friends throughout school) love to be alone. The Blogosphere suits me fine.